Atma-Sphere Class D… Amazing

My conundrum. I'm warming up to Class D. Actually, more the opposite as heat avoidance is the main reason for seeking out a Class D amp.

My problem is that I'm a keeper. I'm not a component every year type of guy. More like every decade.

So there's an obvious tension between getting the value oriented "giant killer" and the point of diminishing return "SOTA".

Value picking seems to be easier when applied to established technology. Class D amp tech seems to in an evolutionary trajectory.

Ralph's and a few other's SOTA are so tempting.

But will the saying that today's SOTA is tomorrow's **** apply to my Class D purchase? On the other hand,  life is short.

What a sad train-wreck of a thread.  I feel bad for Ralph having to try to educate a bunch of keyboard warriors all because someone said something nice about his gear.

If that is so either the opamps were really terrible or the designer didn't know what he was doing! With any module you really don't need a lot of gain, so why would decent opamps affect the sound?? Answer: if the buffer is properly designed and if decent opamps are used, they won't.

Plenty of people have bought in to the "everything matters, everything has a sound" mantra. As I am sure you are well aware, audio people can be quite insecure and easily influenced by the siren song of other's wacky claims. Just look at all the audio voodoo on the market- if snake oil could only be refined into gasoline we would have $0.25/gal gas again.

 

Value picking seems to be easier when applied to established technology. Class D amp tech seems to in an evolutionary trajectory.

Current state of the art class d has performance with distortion at the limits of human hearing. Purifi, a leading class d amp company, is focusing their attention on drivers these days because in their opinion improving their class d amp has reached the point of diminishing returns. Speaker drivers are the weak link in the chain, thus I wouldn't worry about buying a state of the art class d amp only to have it materially improved in 2 years. Besides, one can get the state of the art for around $1000 these days.

@jjss49 

sell products to retail customers... you just get used to alot of random noise from purported know-it-alls

Clearly one need not be selling products at all to be subjected to a lot of random noise from purported know it alls.